Feminist fiction, feisty women & being perfect

In the aftermath of yesterday’s #WomensMarch events, I’m overwhelmed by how feminism is everywhere: living, working, moving; a river of loud, feisty, determined, courageous energy refusing to be silenced, clearly stating we can dare to dream of resurgence. These woman made feminism normal. They put two fingers up at misogyny, smiled their perfect smiles & roared as they did so.

And I realise today I want this power in the books I read. I want it in the books I write.

In a recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing the central character in my third (WIP) book. She’s an older woman, living alone. Like that of the secondary character, no men feature romantically in her world & never have. There is a sense that men are contrary to both their natures. (You’re getting no more than this, dear reader – enjoy your speculation!) My friend pondered the ‘natural expression’ for the female, how men try to manipulate & exploit it. She used the term ‘feminist fiction’ purely in terms of a vehicle for writing the topic & not as a label per se for mine.

It gave me food for thought though. If it’s the responsibility of women writers to promote feminism, how do we accomplish it without coming across as shouty provocateurs? (So tired of that shit in any case.) Do we make it an actual campaign or, in the same way I write my lesbian characters, give it subtle shape & normalise it? I want feminism to be commonplace; entrenched at the centre of my experience, my reading & yes, my writing.

In the same way I don’t want my own books – which have few male characters – labelled ‘women’s’ fiction, I don’t want any of it overtly described as feminist. I’m proud if people describe me as a feminist writer, because I am. I’m also a feminist cat owner, swimmer, frock lover, shopper & cake eater. I don’t want to smash the patriarchy I want to bloody annihilate it.

The stories I write are just that – stories. Mostly about women, told with honesty from my feminist heart, but ‘the genre is book.’

Thanks for this article. Just realised, in my current WIP, there is almost no love story (except incidental description of one elderly couple’s happy marriage). The characters are all busy doing/ being other things during the four weeks when the action unfolds – especially but not exclusively parenting. And I think that’s true of lots of people, lots of the time. I wonder how many rejections I’ll get before I shove in the love? It wasn’t deliberate to leave it out, just happened that way…and your choices of what to highlight for your characters sound similar. But it may make me safe from. Ring labelled “women’s fiction”!

“I wonder how many rejections I’ll get before I shove in the love?”
Quite! Love (& sex) sell books. (Whenever anyone describes my stories as ‘women’s’ fiction, I come out in a rash!)

It was never my intention to make Lili (in Ghostbird) a lesbian until I began writing her. Like a well-behaved character, she told me! I realised I could do it one of two ways & decided, since she was so matter-of-fact, I may as well be. From here it became a small mission – to make the fact of a woman being gay commonplace.

We’d all have a very limited selection of reading material if we only read literature by authors just like ourselves and with main characters just like ourselves.

(Also, proud feminist here – and my genitals haven’t shrivelled away just because I think we should all have the same rights and possibilities. And the marches yesterday were awesome; it’s rare to see such a global grass-roots movement come together so quickly.)